Another government shutdown threatened over Obama executive action on immigration that the GOP expects will grant 'amnesty' to millions of illegals

Republicans and Democrats alike are bracing for the possibility of another government shutdown if President Barack Obama follows through on executive actions that insiders expect will grant new legal status to millions of immigrants living in the United States illegally.

Iowa Republican Steve King told the Des Moines Register on Wednesday that when Congress gathers to pass a continuing resolution that would keep the government running past Dept. 30, 'all bets are off' if Obama grants an amnesty.

'If the president wields his pen and commits that unconstitutional act to legalize millions,' he said, 'I think that becomes something that is nearly political nuclear.'

'I think the public would be mobilized and galvanized and that changes the dynamic of any continuing resolution and how we might deal with that.'

Scroll down for video

SHUTDOWN: Steve King, a GOP congressman from Iowa is warning that new White House actions on immigration could push House Republicans to hold up the federal government's 2015 budget appropriation

What message would it send? As the White House considers new amnesties for illegal immigrants already in the US, Republicans worry that it will open a new floodgate for Central Americans and Mexicans who want to live in America

Last year's shutdown, although it ultimately affected a minuscule portion of the federal government's operations, swung the political pendulum in Democrats' favor, as they succeeded in mocking the GOP as obstructionists responsible for slowing the economy and denying social services to vulnerable Americans.

'As we near the 1-year anniversary of the Republican Government Shutdown of 2013 that cost our nation's economy $24 billion, House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi's spokesman Drew Hammill said Thursday in a statement, 'Republican leaders, once again, prefer to threaten another government shutdown over advancing essential legislation.'

'It's time to end the kowtowing to the Tea Party extremist elements, get serious about legislating for the American people, and take these ridiculous threats off the table,' he said.

President Obama repeatedly refused to negotiate a budget deal with Republicans last year, a position that the GOP mocked when the White House negotiated the release of Army Sgt. Bowe Bergdahl from the Taliban.

The Obama administration seems willing to brave the brickbats again and stand its ground, although it won't say what sort of immigration policy changes Obama is planning.

Share this article

'The president is determined to act where House Republicans won't,' White House Press Secretary Josh Earnest told reporters Wednesday.

'It would be a real shame if Republicans were to engage in an effort to shut down the government over a commonsense [immigration] solution.'

Business groups seeking cheap labor, including the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, have swarmed to support the White House's promise of immigration reform.

But Florida Republican Sen. Marco Rubio, R-Fla., suggested this week that the budget process could at least soften whatever the administration is planning this year.

'There will have to be some sort of a budget vote or a Continuing Resolution vote, so I assume there will be some sort of a vote on this,' Rubio told the Breitbart.com website.

'I'm interested to see what kinds of ideas my colleagues have about using funding mechanisms to address this issue. Beyond that, I'm not sure if the president is going to make this decision before we go back [in session] or after.'

Meanwhile, the White House is crafting its blame-it-on-Congress legal justification to back up Obama's impending executive actions.

Facing an expected onslaught of opposition, the administration plans to argue that Congress failed to provide enough resources to fully enforce U.S. laws, thereby ceding wide latitude to White House to prioritize deportations of the 11.5 million people who are in the country illegally, administration officials and legal experts told the Associated Press.

But Republicans, too, are exploring their legal options for stopping Obama from what they've deemed egregious presidential overreaching.

President Obama has hinted that he plans to unveil a series of executive orders covering immigration policy this year, and Republicans are rumbling about using the threat of a government shutdown to slow him down

Arrests followed sit-ins in front of the White House, including a woman draped in an American flag

A self-imposed, end-of-summer deadline to act on immigration is rapidly approaching.

While Obama has yet to receive the formal recommendations he's requested from Homeland Security Secretary Jeh Johnson, administration officials said the president is intimately familiar with the universe of options and won't spend much time deliberating once Johnson delivers his recommendations.

After resisting calls to act alone in hopes Congress would pass a comprehensive immigration fix, Obama in June bowed to immigration activists and said that 'if Congress will not do their job, at least we can do ours.'

The most sweeping, controversial step under consideration involves halting deportation for millions, a major expansion of a 2012 Obama program that deferred prosecutions for those brought here illegally as children.

Roughly half a million have benefited from that program, known as Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals or DACA.

But while prosecutors are routinely expected to use their discretion on a case-by-case basis, such blanket exempting of entire categories of people has never been done on the scale of what Obama is considering – potentially involving many millions of people if he extends relief to parents of DACA children, close relatives of U.S. citizens or immigrants with clean criminal records.

'The question is how broadly can the president extend the categories and still stay on the side of spectrum of ensuring the laws are faithfully executed?' said Cristina Rodriguez, who left the Justice Department's Office of Legal Counsel in 2013 to teach at Yale Law School.

Other options under consideration, such as changes to how green cards are distributed and counted, might be less controversial because of the support they enjoy from the business community and other influential groups.

But Derrick Morgan, a former adviser to Vice President Dick Cheney and a scholar at the conservative Heritage Foundation, said Obama will still face staunch opposition as long as he attempts an end run around Congress.

More trouble: Texas Governor Rick Perry said a week ago that he wouldn't be surprised to learn that Islamist militants from the ISIS terror group have been slipping into the US through its border with Mexico

Obama's goal had been to announce his decision around Labor Day, before leaving on a trip next week to Estonia and Wales. But a host of national security crises have pushed the announcement back, likely until after Obama returns, said the officials, who weren't authorized to comment by name and demanded anonymity.

Obama's actions will almost surely be challenged in court.

'Any potential executive action the president takes will be rooted in a solid legal foundation,' White House spokesman Shawn Turner said.

Obama may have undermined his case because he has insisted time and again that he's the president, not the king, and 'can't just make the laws up by myself.' In a 2012 interview with Telemundo, he defended his decision to defer deportations for children but said he couldn't go any bigger.

'If we start broadening that, then essentially I would be ignoring the law in a way that I think would be very difficult to defend legally. So that's not an option,' he said then.

Republicans are hinting that they will also consider legal action to thwart what they've denounced as a violation of the separation of powers. House Speaker John Boehner, in a conference call this month with GOP House members, accused Obama of 'threatening to rewrite our immigration laws unilaterally.'

'If the president fails to faithfully execute the laws of our country, we will hold him accountable,' Boehner said, according to an individual who participated in the call.

The House already has passed legislation to block Obama from expanding DACA and, through its power of the purse, could attempt to cut off the funds that would be needed to implement the expansion.

House Republicans could also consider widening or amending their existing lawsuit against Obama over his health care law, a case that both parties have suggested could be a prelude to impeachment proceedings.